Weblogsky: Jon Lebkowsky's Weblog » Global

Haiti: Person Finder

jonl — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:58:18 +0000

The “Katrina People Finder” technology has been updated by Ka-Ping Yee at Google, and placed online. It’s embedded at the State Department’s web site. Not sure why they changed it to “Person Finder,” but it’s simple, easy to use, and has two components: a search, if you’re looking for someone who’s lost, and a way to report information about someone that’s found, confirmed dead, etc.

I’m embedding it here, as well:

Water Spirits

jonl — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:17:56 +0000

This caught my eye, and I was wishing I could drop everything and head for the National Museum of African Art.

It’s as rousing as a drum roll, as piquant as a samba, as sexy as Césaria Évora’s voice. It’s about glitter and tears, bawdy jokes and baskets of flowers, miracles and mysteries, money in hand and affairs of the heart. It’s about standing at the edge of the sea at dawn and watching a world re-born. In that world no one walks; everyone dances and swims; everyone, that is, who has taken the plunge into Mami Wata’s realm.

Who is Mami Wata? She is Mother Water, Mother of Fishes, goddess of oceans, rivers and pools, with sources in West and Central Africa and tributaries throughout the African Americas, from Bahia to Brooklyn. Usually shown as a half-woman, half-fish, she slips with ease between incompatible elements: water and air, tradition and modernity, this life and the next.

Truth to Power

jonl — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:00:11 +0000

Rebecca MacKinnon tweeted a pointer to Ai Weiwei’s Truth to Power, a Chinese blog. This links to an interview posted in Chinese and English.

Simon Kirby: Your criticisms of the Olympic Games are not reported in
the official media, but your blog remains online. What is the purpose of
your blog?
Ai Weiwei: I do my blog because this is the only possible channel through
which a person can express a personal opinion in China. No newspaper,
magazine or television channel would ever present your argument or ideas. I
am the most interviewed person in China, even domestically, and yet even if
I say something it cannot be published here: so I am talking to myself – it is
ridiculous. So I felt that a blog might be a good way to create one forum in
which to open one’s mind. Yet every time I sit to write I still hesitate: should
I do it? What will the consequences be?

Reminder that we take so much for granted in the USA.

Bruce Sterling State of the World 2009

jonl — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:44:26 +0000

The annual State of the World conversation with Bruce Sterling, led by yours truly, is under way. You have to be a member of the WELL to post directly, but nonmembers can send comments and questions to inkwell /at/ well.com. Link

Hossein Derakshan arrested?

jonl — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:47:44 +0000

According to Global Voices Advocacy, the active and highly visible Iranian blogger Hossein Derakshan (aka Hoder) has been arrested in Tehran and “is being investigated on suspicion of espionage for the state of Israel.” No posts on Hoder’s blog since October. Hoder’s been active in shining a light on other similar arrests. GV notes that the arrest hasn’t been confirmed by other news sources.